This is just getting stupid. After expectations of a rebound in initial claims from 367K last week (naturally revised higher to 369K), to 370K (with the lowest of all sellside expectations at 355K), the past week mysteriously, yet so very unsurprisingly in the aftermath of the fudged BLS unemployment number, saw claims tumble to a number that is so ridiculous not even CNBC's Steve Liesman bothered defending it, or 339K. Ironically, not even the Labor Department is defending it: it said that "one large state didn't report some quarterly figures." Great, but what was reported was a headline grabbing number that is just stunning for reelection purposes. This was the lowest number since 2008. The only point to have this print? For 2-3 bulletin talking points at the Vice Presidential debate tonight. Everything else is now noise.

It is also sad that the US "economy" has devolved to such trivial data fudging on a week by week basis, which makes even the Chinese Department of Truth appear amateurish by comparison. Needless to say, Not Seasonally Adjusted initial claims jumped by 26K to 327K in the past week but who's counting. Finally, what is the reason for ongoing QEternity if the employment situation is now back to normal. Finally, in completely ignored news, because who needs global trade when you have toner cartridge, and generally ink, the US trade deficit in August rose by 4.1% to $44.2 billion, on expectations of a deterioration to $44.0 billion. Then again nobody talks about the US trade deficit during presidential debates so all good here.

Jobless Claims beat by the most since May 2009 and is the lowest since Jan 2008 - the new normal...

If one state doesn't report, then how do we report an number? Wouldn't it make sense to wait until all number are in.
Also just take sometime, to look at the numbers and look around in your cities.
Things are still not in great shape.

The only "large state" large enough to skew the numbers that far is California, whose government employees just happen to be one of Obama's largest campaign contributors. Jobless claims in CA are just under 50K, which just happens to be about the amount of the "massaging". Corruption and theft really know no boundaries in the Obama Administration.

Remember when everyone used to consider Chinese economic data as either complete fabrications or massive exagerations. No one would trust or give them respect. America clearly isn't paying attention to the consequences of what they are doing.

Right. How convenient. When was the last time that happened, I wonder?

So maybe the Chicago gang stole this headline. Now, the question is how quickly can someone get that missing state's number, and then get the story behind its omission? By tonight would be nice, at least for one of those factoids.

They are the BLS with the S standing for STATISTICS. Why would an organization just leave the number at 0 from the missing state??? Wouldn't statisticians EXTRAPOLATE that number based on the numbers coming in from the other 49 states and the recent historic trend from the missing state???

Three guys at the BLS had qualms about being so blatant with fudging the numbers. One is sleeping with the fishes at the bottom of Lake Michigan while the other two are being reeducated at Guantanamo. The Chicago crowd's role was to provide the concrete galoshes.

Maybe the Feds are no longer recognizing some slacker state that just isn't doing well. Maybe its Texas, we all know they are part of the 47% that won't vote for Obama. Or maybe its a state that is in negotiations for sale to China. We gotta keep deleveraging if we want to have goodies to dole out to cronies. Defeatism will not be tolerated!

This is WAY beyond stupid now. We are now in full blown retard mode. Hell, even my 14 year old is saying: "Dad, what they say and what I see are too different things."

A 14 YEAR OLD folks with no guidance from me. I intentially haven't brought it up in years because I wanted a more honest opinion (and not one to try to please his parents). But, then again, we unschool so he is already in a different league.

Re-education's the key. Broach the subject with the young and they get it. They aren't blindsided by the bullshit story that schools serve up, which is paper currencies have stable value and that the value of their savings grows, as that magic Compounding Interest multiplier makes them all rich.

The worst cases I've found among older retired military people. Patriotic. They just can't imagine that things aren't as they always believed. Little experience with finance. Have often sacrificed much. But in these matters, extremely naive. (And Im from a military family and served myself.)

Read that article and the first words from my mouth were "This is fukn' ridiculous !"

There are people I know (actually fine individuals ) and I just have to stay away from them till the damned election is over and Whoever is sworn in. They believe all of these lies - and can't imagine questioning any of it. The really sad part is the criminals tell the Big Lie, because they seem to be able to get away with it.

I don't disagree with your assertions, just question who is left shorting these issues to cause a massive rip. I don't think there are that many buyers left, so where is the kindling to start another bull run?

I think you are seeing it with Apple from the minute it hit 625. There are a ton of shops out there that had awful performance this year. They are probably desperately buying any dip hoping to make up a few bps. That's just my guess.

John Williams: I normally put out a commentary on the numbers, and, in this one, I raised the possibility of politics as a factor. The problem is very serious misreporting of the numbers and the result is what appears to be a bogus unemployment rate. The BLS reported a drop in the unemployment rate from 8.1% to 7.8%, three-tenths of a percentage point, which runs counter to what is being experienced in the marketplace.

What few people realize is that the headline unemployment rate is calculated each month using a unique set of seasonal adjustments. The August unemployment rate, which was 8.1%, was calculated using what BLS calls a "concurrent seasonal factor adjustment." Each month the agency recalculates the series to adjust for regular seasonal patterns tied to the school year or holiday shopping season or whatever is considered relevant. The next month, it does the same thing using another set of seasonal factors. Rather than publish a number that's consistent with the prior month's estimate, it recalculates everything, including the previous month, but it doesn't publish the revised number from the previous month.

The assumption is that the monthly recalculations don't make much difference over time, but they do. The depth and the protraction of the current severe economic downturn have thrown off the annual seasonal-factor adjustments. The result is very volatile seasonal factors month-to-month. That means the new calculations for the September number may have resulted in a very significant revision to the August number. Again, though, the BLS doesn't publish that, so the headline August-to-September 2012 change in the unemployment rate is not consistent and not comparable. Last December, when the BLS put the seasonal adjustments on a consistent basis for the year, as it does once per year, the November 2011 unemployment rate had just been reported as showing four-tenths of a percentage point drop – an unusually large monthly decline that never took place. When revised to a consistent basis, the drop in headline November unemployment revised to two-tenths of a percent. That is a big change. I think something like that happened here.

The BLS knows what the actual number is. It has an actual estimate for August, which is consistent with September, but it doesn't publish it because it says it "doesn't want to confuse data users." But it is putting out numbers that have no meaning month-to-month. One month before the election and a month after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced Quantitative Easing (QE) 3, is not a time to have inaccurate numbers. The BLS should publish the consistent numbers now.

That's right. Here is the key now... Now that they need to go full retard with the numbers, they need to make it seem political... Both on the number fudging front and on the calling out the number fudging front. It keeps people perfectly divided. Idiot republicans can call it Chicago politics, and idiot democrats can roll their eyes and call the claims of fudging typical sour grape republican BS.

The goal is to always keep the battle political... It helps to hide the truth, in plain sight. Drudge has this article linked... I sure hope people wake up to this false R vs. D charade. The BLS is a propaganda machine. All of the numbers are propaganda. Lies, damn lies and statistics. Inflation running hot? Change the formula, take out food and oil, print. Unemployment running high, publish U2, hide U6 and let the sheep look at a happy number. It's all bullshit. This isn't a democrat or a republican thing, it's a government thing.

Following are three quotes that capture what appears to be happening relative to information that is being released:

1) "All this was inspired by the principle--which is quite true within itself--that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying."—Adolf Hitler , Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X

2) "In our country the lie has become not just a moral category, but a pillar of the state."---Alexander Solzhenitsyn

3) A lie told often enough becomes the truth. ---Lenin

Shame is not a word in their vocabulary who play so loosely with the truth.

Since then, the argument has raged on, and there have been a variety of different reports and interpretations.

Well, we're glad to say that we've finally gotten to the bottom of what happened.

We spoke to a source at the Labor Department. According to this source, who is an analyst at the Department, here's what happened:

ALL STATES WERE INCLUDED in this week's jobless claims. Assertions that "a large state" was excluded from the report are patently false.

HOWEVER...

It is likely that some of the jobless claims in one large state--California--were not included in the claims reported to the Department of Labor this week. This happens occasionally, our source says. When a state's jobless claims bureau is short-staffed, sometimes the state does not process all of the claims that came in during the week in time to get them to the DOL. The source believes that this is what happened this week.

The California claims that were not processed in time to get into this week's jobless report will appear in future reports, most likely next week's or the following week's. In other words, those reports might be modestly higher than expected.

The source believes that the number of California claims that were not processed totalled about 15,000-25,000. Thus, if one were to "normalize" the overall not-seasonally-adjusted jobless claims number, it would increase by about 15,000-25,000.

This week's "normalized" jobless claims number, therefore, would be about 355,000-365,000, not the 339,000 that was reported. This compares to the 370,000 consensus expectation.

In other words, had all of California's jobless claims been processed in time to make the jobless-claims release, this jobless number would still have been better than economists were expecting--but not as much better as it appeared.

Again, the as-yet-unprocessed claims will appear in future reports. So next week's number may well be higher than expected.

Yea, I that noticed Liesman crawled back into his "test tube", and slithered away! He wanted to go jump on the red line to the BLS. Either that or he wanted to put his body armor on before Santelli gets to him!

No kidding Doc. I have become truly jaded and yet they still find a way to make me say Wow every day. This one does not surprise me though. I truly believe there is NO way Obama and Ben came this far to trip at the finish line. Everything will look spectacular for the next month.

Don't let it get you crazy. It's like you said about gravity yesterday. They have suspended it temporarily but man when it comes down it will hurt. Some people will listen to you and some are just destined to get their ass kicked. In the meantime it is almost humerous watching how far desperate gimmicks can convince real people that their lives are not getting worse right in front of their eyes. I was a Psych major and I never saw experiments this nuts.

Because of the War on <Insert Excuse Here>, all available digital ink resources have been redirected to Treasury and the Federal Reserve, and this left the GPO unable to even produce PDFs of Titles 42-51 of CFR (which are supposed to published as of October 1).

If you remember back a few months ago in Chantilly Virginia the Bilderberg group met. In hat meeting several things where leaked that indicated Obama was not moving fast enough in the grand design to destroy the remnants of the middle class and the geopolitical collapse. There analysis of Romney was he would intensify the attack on Iran and be a better pusher of the NWO diagram..In short there is a profound differences,,don't run to the false safety of consensus in this played no difference card, not real.. The false employment data is a diversion to escort the belief that the fix is in for Obama, It's not!!

You guys are so funny, everything is negative yet put in perspective things are certainly better. Even if the number is 340k,350k, 360k - remember last year the number was 402k. I don't how bad your math skills are, but a number below 402k is better.

Instead of trying to 'spin' everything, how about looking at realty and the trend. The trend is from extremely high weekly unemployment claims to lower levels. Is there more to go? Of course, but the trend is moving in the right direction.

And don't forget, this is with the election and fiscal cliff overhanging the economy. No smart businessman would hire people before year-end. With these issues to be resolved, we should see extremely strong growth next year no doubt as the housing market picks up and companies use their historic levels of profitability to upgrade and capex

I guess you don't actually read the data from housing that in many markets prices are nicely off the bottom. It will take over 10 years to exceed the previous top as that was created through artifically means, but prices are moving up...

You don't even need to read the data if you're a conspiracy guy, you can just look at the corporate reports from home builders - Toll is making record profits and sales, inventory and backlog orders are up massively - are they 'inventing' these numbers? LOL stop being so biased in trying to justify your opinion and look at the real data

The difference between the fucktards who threatened to leave the country if a Republican is elected and me, is that I LEFT the country in 2008. I will be be relinquishing my US citizenship next year to become a German citizen. Why, you ask? Because if O is re-elected I expect more draconian measures against those of us working overseas and the taxes we pay the US (in addition to our host countries). Never forget, Obama hates white people, and will be more than happy to conficate their private retirement accounts to keep the "gimmedats" on coming to Holders "people."

No, in the long run, Romney won't be any better. But in the short run, we might have a little breathing space to convert our retirement savings into bullets, bullion, and beans.

Anyone who wants to brag about 339,000 unemployment claims is totaly out of touch with reality and delusional if they think that gives them a boost. People dont care about numbers, they care about FREE OBAMAO PHONES!

So do you think the unions have enough bucks in their coffers that they could tell their members NOT to file for unemployment until after the elections, and that the unions would pay them until then?

My research shows that profit growth has fallen below the level to generate job growth. So the very opposite of what we are seeing reported should be happening.

Another anolmony is tat the corporate profits number as reported by the GDP now reflects higher year over year profit growth rates than the 1700 companies in the Value Line Study and higher growth rates than the S&P 500 have been reporting.

So either the smalll businesses in the US are going full out, or the data has been screwed with big time.

And it all started to look rather bizarre when the BEA came out and revised their GDP numbers last spring(2012). Suddenly we had wide swings in their corporate profit numbers quarter to quarter, wheras the Value Line and S&P data remained in a consistent trend.

Without employment or a society that can offer it to "everybody" what will those with no unemployment live on? They will exist no matter how many of the population you decide to wipe out. Note unemployment is a % of the total population and is determined by the efficiency of the economy.

In global terms, a single populations, then which portion of the world is not getting any work? Next time a politician says we are going to improve the efficiency think what this means for unemployment. Where unemployment becomes a problem the politicians can't debate and conceal on every turn is what is permitted for people with nothing do live on do? NO LAW WILL EVER HOLD UP ON EXPECTING PEOPLE TO LIVE ON NOTHING!

Try this, your income is now considered nothing so have can you be expected to pay taxes? Government will then tell you that you cannot live on nothing pay your taxes.

Go and ask Obama or Romney the former is foodstamps the latter by the nature of words he seems to frequently utter and defines the individual would be?

Man was a clever f^&ker that created all these wonderous things to make himself more efficienct to the point he can't provide enough work for everybody and destroys his own construct of laws in the process. Utterly f%^king stupid!

These do not reflect the true seriousness of the jobs situation. People are getting off the rolls, you pretty much have the take a cavity search to let any employer hire you, and people are getting part-time work with no benefits and low-to-low median pay.

the shit is getting worse, and there's nothing Obamney can do anything about it.